


Such A Lovely Place

by DesertVixen



Category: Hotel California - The Eagles (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:12:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24344038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/pseuds/DesertVixen
Summary: Down a dark desert highway, Tracy Graham has an unusual encounter...
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	Such A Lovely Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/gifts).



Tracy Graham leaned on the hood of her car at the gas station, looking out across the desert, contemplating her current situation and her life’s choices.

She was tired.

Not just tired of driving. 

Tired of her whole life.

Tired of her tiny apartment. 

Tired of being a secretary, of working for her boss who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. 

Tired of never having any excitement in her life. She had moved to Los Angeles to experience glamour and excitement, not to shuffle papers for a sleazy real estate guy.

She supposed all of that was what had driven her here. She had come to the point where she couldn’t take one more “accidental” pinch, one more leer, one more sorry warning that she had better be a nice girl if she wanted a raise. 

He’d kept her working late because it was a three-day weekend, and she needed the overtime, because he never had given her the raise. 

This time, when he had cornered her at her desk, she had lost her patience – lost her temper when he tried to slide his hand up her leg. She had threatened to call his wife and let her know that he couldn’t keep it in his pants – and had threatened to tell his wife what else she knew.

Tracy knew what had happened to the last girl who’d worked her job, who hadn’t said no to his advances. More to the point, she knew where the last girl lived with her bouncing baby boy with the boss’s gray eyes. After all, she’d written the checks he had signed for her medical bills.

Their eyes had locked and finally, Tracy had won a round. Sweating, he’d stuffed five hundred dollars in her purse and told her it was a bonus for all her hard work.

She had walked out the door and known she was never coming back to this office. She’d sling hash and coffee in a diner before she came back.

She’d told Maida, the girl who worked in the lobby of their building, that she would miss her. 

She had stopped at a pay phone, called her friend Sara in Las Vegas, and told her she was driving down. Tracy needed to see someone she cared about, someone who cared about her as a person. She needed a break, even if it was just for a weekend.

In her tiny apartment, Tracy had packed her few good things in her suitcase. Rent was paid up through the end of the month, but she didn’t want to come back. There was really no one and nothing to miss here. Maybe she would come back, and maybe she wouldn’t.

Maybe she didn’t need a break as much as she needed a new start.

*** 

The drive had been uneventful, until the tire went flat. It wasn’t that Tracy didn’t know how to change a tire, but she hated doing it. One always got so dirty changing a tire. It had been a stroke of luck really that the police officer had driven by. Her spare was in pretty sorry shape – really, the car was in pretty sorry shape – but it got her to the service station. 

They’d been able to fix the tire for her, but it was later than she liked. However, going back was not an option. So, she’d bought a Coke and some other supplies, and it was time to get back on the road. 

“You okay, miss?” Tracy about jumped out of her skin when the man spoke to her. “Are you driving on tonight? It’s getting late.”

She blinked. Tracy would swear he hadn’t been there a moment before. She would have remembered him, in his vaguely old-fashioned clothes. “That’s my plan,” she said.

“Driving across the desert is hard work at night. If you get tired, you can always stop at the Hotel California. It’s a lovely place for a break.”

“I…I’ll remember that,” Tracy said, placing her purse on her seat. She needed to get going – Sara would be worrying. She had tried to call her from the service station but there had been no answer.

“You do that,” the man said as she started the car.

Tracy pulled away from the service station, and never looked behind her. If she had turned to look back, she would have seen no man at all.

*** 

She felt like she had been driving forever, but the desert never changed. Tracy was beginning to think this was a seriously bad decision, that she should have slept off her anger and started out in the morning.

Then she saw the sign for the turnoff. Hotel California, five miles.

A break suddenly sounded like an excellent idea.

Tracy wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. The hotel was an older mission-style building, with an air of worn elegance. It was lovely, with flowery vines on one side of the building and a fountain merrily bubbling in the curve of the drive. There was no vacancy sign, but when she went into the lobby, there was an older man on the desk. For some reason, he seemed familiar to Tracy.

“Welcome, miss. Did you need a room for the night?”

“Yes, please.” She summoned up a hopeful smile. “Is it too late to get something to eat?”

“Our restaurant never closes,” he said as she signed the register. “Do you have any bags?”

Tracy put her battered dark green overnight case on the counter. She’d put in just the bare necessities for the night, leaving her big suitcase in the car. She didn’t plan to be here long. “Just this.”

“We’ll have it taken to your room,” he said smoothly, handing her a key for number thirteen. “Here’s your key.”

The restaurant was fairly empty, and Tracy was struck by the server’s unfashionable clothes. Perhaps the hotel preferred a nostalgic air because everything was…dated seemed the kindest word. When she had finished her simple meal – fried chicken and new potatoes, apricot cobbler for dessert – Tracy found she was quite refreshed. 

In fact, she wasn’t sleepy at all. She decided to wander a little before finding her room. 

There was dancing in the courtyard, more people in dated outfits, dancing to dated music, but all apparently having the time of their lives. None of them seemed to notice her, nor the patrons who milled about the lobby. Tracy sat down on a comfortable chaise lounge, telling herself that she would just people-watch for a few minutes. 

A few minutes stretched into longer, and Tracy acknowledged that she felt a strange reluctance to get up and ask the man at the desk how to find her room. Something about the whole place was making her uneasy. She kept thinking about the man at the desk, and how familiar he seemed, until she realized just where she had seen him – or his double – before.

The man at the gas station. As impossible as it seemed, Tracy was sure now. She was trying to decide what it all meant when a man’s voice behind her made her jump. “Drink, miss?

Heart pounding, she turned her head and saw the man, now dressed in the uniform of a waiter, holding a wineglass. “Drink?”

He held out the glass. “It’s a specialty of the hotel – pink champagne on ice.”

Tracy took the glass, and felt her uneasiness grow. She was being silly, overwrought after a long day, and her mind was playing tricks on her. She should have a drink, and then go to bed, so she could get where she was going… 

Tracy realized that he seemed to be waiting on her, realized that everyone else she saw was holding one of the glasses. Even some of the dancers were holding the glasses as they danced. 

The bubbly pink liquid looked so inviting, almost like a bubble bath that would soak all her cares away – another luxury she realized room thirteen might have. Tracy lifted the glass, leaning back a little on the lounge – enough to realize that the lobby ceiling was mirrored.

And the only person in the mirror was herself.

She was so shocked that she dropped the glass, heard it shatter on the floor. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”

“I’ll fetch you another one,” he told her, and there was a sinister undertone in his voice. 

Tracy realized that she had to get out of here. She didn’t know what was going on but she knew she had to get out of here. Carefully, casually, she stood and started towards the door. She was almost there when she heard his voice again. 

“You can’t leave us so soon. You haven’t had your champagne.”

Tracy screamed as he stepped towards her, and ran out into the night. One of her heels caught on the doorframe, and she kicked her shoes off, running along the drive in her stocking feet. Her car was still where she had left it – thank God! – and for once it started without a problem. She slammed her foot down on the gas pedal and drove away, rocks flying in her wake. Tracy kept her eyes on the road, feeling sure that if she looked back or to the side she would see the man again. If she saw him, she was sure she would die of fright.

She had just reached the sign pointing off the main road when the car’s engine sputtered and died. With a sob, Tracy scrambled into her back seat, pulling the blanket she kept in the back seat over her head and closing her eyes.

She couldn’t do anything else.

*** 

“Miss? Miss, are you okay?” The sound of a man’s voice had Tracy quivering with fear as she heard her car door open. Carefully, she pulled the blanket down, sure she must look a fright.

It was not the man from yesterday – any of them. Instead it was a handsome police officer, about her age.

“Yes...I’m all right. My car died last night and I didn’t know what else to do. I guess I could have tried to hike to the hotel…” She let her voice trail off, wondering what he would say. She could almost believe that she’d had some disturbing dream. In fact, she had almost expected to wake up in her dingy apartment.

He grinned, and she found herself smiling back. “Be glad you didn’t. There was a bad fire twenty years ago last night. There’s nothing but a ruined building there now.”

Tracy looked up at the sign pointing towards the hotel. She could have sworn that last night it had been new and shiny in the beam of her headlights, but now she could see it was old and weathered, about to fall to the ground. The morning sun was warm, but she shivered.

“I’ve called for a tow truck to bring your car to the nearest service station, but can I give you a ride?”

Tracy agreed, and watched as he pulled her suitcase out and put it in the police cruiser. As they drove along, she learned she’d actually been very close to the Nevada-California state line. If only she had kept driving…

“It seems like a lot of people break down near where you were stopped,” the police officer told her. “Probably for the best, though – there’s a deadman’s curve not too far ahead that is bad if you’re tired.”

He dropped her at the service station with a cheerful nod. “I hope the rest of your trip goes more smoothly.”

“Thanks,” she told him as he lifted out her suitcase. “I’m sure it will.”

“It’s a shame the hotel is gone,” he said. “I hear it used to be a lovely place for a break.”

She had thought so too, last night. “I’m sure it was.”

When he had pulled away, she picked up her suitcase and walked to the pay phone. This time she was able to get Sara on the line. Her friend told her to sit tight until she arrived. 

Tracy hoped she hurried. She’d rest easier once she put more distance between herself and the Hotel California. Not that she would ever tell anyone about what had happened, even Sara.

Who would believe her?

*** 

Off a desert highway, the wind blows through the burned remains of a mission-style hotel. The bell has fallen and cracked, and a diamondback rattler curls up under it to avoid the sun. Scorpions hunt their prey in the courtyard where people used to dance. The remains of a chandelier chime as they twist in the wind in what used to be the restaurant where the ceiling is intact. The lobby floor carpeted with shards of broken glass from the once-extravagant ceiling. The remains of the guest ledger are burned and dry, and the writing on what pages remain is so faded as to be illegible. The fountain is only full when it rains, and never bubbles anymore.

It is deserted and desolate.

It is as if no one has been here for twenty years.

Except for the battered green overnight case that sits on the front desk, and the black patent leather heels that lie on the ground as if the wearer kicked them off that have accumulated no dust.

The Hotel California used to be such a lovely place.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like it!
> 
> I had a couple ways to go with this one, but I thought it was best suited to a "Return to Glennascaul" phantom place treatment, and I wanted to give her a chance to escape. The pink champagne and mirrors seemed like the best way to give her a chance.
> 
> Thanks for the really open prompt! I had a lot of fun with it.


End file.
